Thomas Overton Moore

Thomas Overton Moore (10 April 1804-25 June 1876) was Governor of Louisiana from 23 January 1860 to 25 January 1864, succeeding Robert C. Wickliffe and preceding Henry Watkins Allen. Moore was responsible for ordering the state militia to seize all US Army military posts in the state as Louisiana joined the Confederate States of America before the start of the American Civil War.

Biography
Thomas Overton Moore was born in Sampson County, North Carolina on 10 April 1804 to a family of planters, the grandson of General Thomas Overton. Moore served as the manager of his uncle's plantation after relocating to Louisiana in 1829, and he was elected to the State House of Representatives in 1848. Moore was a member of the Southern Democrats, and he voted for former Vice-President John C. Breckinridge during the 1860 presidential election. When Abraham Lincoln of the liberal US Republican Party won the election and threatened to outlaw slavery, Moore held a state convention on secession. On 10 January 1861, he had the state militia seize all US Army military posts in the state, and Louisiana would go on to join the Confederate States of America. Moore failed to convince Jefferson Davis to increase the defenses of Louisiana during the American Civil War, and Moore fled to Texas after leaving office in 1864, by which time much of Louisiana had fallen to the Union. Moore fled to Mexico and then to Cuba after the war's end, and he received a pardon from President Andrew Johnson on 15 January 1867 after his friend William T. Sherman hand-delivered Moore's request for amnesty to Johnson. Moore died in Alexandria, Louisiana in 1876.